I've got a simple kernel driver that detects my
WebCam Go, but nothing more exciting than that. I discovered
that Creative have not added the optional EEPROM that makes
the camera look like they made it. I think all they've done
is to license the chip, slap on a decent motion-sensor and
lens, plus the maximum amount of memory. Neat.

With actual detection working, and seemingly no leaks
(bah!), I can start figuring out the following:

How to configure the camera (luminance and other fun
things) and set up how much bandwidth to grab (full 12Mb/s
might be possible)

How to read a videostream, and pushing it to the V4L
interface

Choosing between JPEG or uncompressed images

Reading the stored pictures

Getting the picture looking good might be
another problem - heaps of settings to tweak.

Another weekend to spend in front of the computer. Useful
things done so far:

1.Played Diablo II - getting near the end for the first time
with a necromancer. A lot of the things I like were never
mentioned in actual reviews of the game. I think today's
journalists are getting lazy. Have they even played the
games they review, or are they inventing some wibble based
on the press blurb? Are short sentences any better than
run-on sentences?

2.Read Advogato, and remembered I hadn't certified
bagder yet. He's not a personal
aquaintance, but I did some translation for project Dancer
waay back. Maybe I'll check out the project again soon...

3.I am fed up waiting for Creative to get their arses in
gear and give us the promised driver for Webcam Go. I am
writing one now. I have the W9968cf specs, and I intend to
use them. Hopefully the userspace utilities I downloaded
will be useful in debugging.

Judging from the Winbond docs, there is a
way to store pictures on the camera built into the chip, so
I might get full functionality straight away. I just hope
Creative haven't replaced that bit with their own way of
storing pictures. I've e-mailed Creative with a request for
some information about the driver status, but I have no hope
of ever getting a reply.

If any USB-knowledgable developers are reading and want to
help out, just go through Sourceforce to contact me when
I've set up a Go page.

My cow-orkers are psychos. At least one or two show symptoms
of
borderline psychosis. Developers, the lot of them.
Depression seems to
feature a lot among them, too. Is this normal? I know a lot
of programmer
types, many of them doing it for a living (of sorts) and
they're either mad
in some way (mostly non-destructive), or they're quite
depressed (which
isn't madness anymore, not with inflation and diseases and
banks
messing with your account and teeth hurting and women
rejecting you
and salaries that never last long enough and buses on strike
and CDs
misburning and people complaining loudly in their online
diaries and
bosses yelling at everybody when one person screws up and
overtime
payment being cancelled and fave websites being DOS'd out of
existence and stupid locals who smell). Anyway, I don't
think I know any
normal people at all.

Development is at a standstill. This time it's the fault of
apathy and
Diablo II. And I'm tired all the time. Maybe staying up the
night before
going to work, just to play Diablo II isn't always a smart
thing?

Ack. I ache again. Tip if you want to start with martial
arts: Get a body-replacement before you even begin the
flexing-of-legs things. Seems to work well against my aching
wrists, but I'm not sure if it's worth the trade-off.
They might not be available for sale yet, though; the MIBs,
who broadcast straight to my pineal gland on Saturdays, say
they want to keep it private for another 20 years.

Lameness on the coding-side, but I sort of have the planning
for how a decent gameloop should be setup. Garg! My friggin'
connection died again! Fork() you, Eircom, fork() you and
the router you rode in on!

The most useful thing I've done the past week or so, apart
from taking a vacation, was debugging an SDL program for
someone on #sdl at openprojects.net. Got me started SDL
coding again, too, and I realised my coding is shit after
staying away for about 20 hours. Don't give up, Coen, it'd
be bad for morale if we all gave up straight away!

I need more hands on my project. Only cynical adventure-game
freaks need to apply, though.

I live in Ireland, but I don't enjoy it much more than the
previous place.
It's early morning, and I'm downloading old games for
research purposes. Lack of sleep is making the voices come
back. They tell me to set up an account on Advogato, so I do
that. Maybe a silly move. I go sleep now.

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